“Computer Says No” Campaign

Info

Summary

The hilarious series Little Britain introduced the term “Computer says No!” and this campaign will use that term in associations to all the Harms of Technology relevant to Humane Tech.

Goals

Use the popularity of a well-known term to attract attention to specific tech harms.

Reach a very wide audience with an easy to share series of social media memes.

Subtly draw attention to The Center for Humane Technology landing page on each meme.

Through awareness we will try to affect behaviorial and habit change at the same time

Audience

Primary audience is the wider public

Secondary audience are tech workers, where ‘Computer says no!’ is most popular now

Success criteria

To be defined as soon as we can get some concrete metrics in place.

Retrospective

No retrospective has been held yet.

Retrospectives will be held at regular intervals.

Description

Little Britain was a BBC radio show, then a TV series that ran from 2003 - 2007. A recurring theme were sketches where character Carol Beer (played by David Walliams) handled customer support enquiries, that ended with “Computer says No!” i.e. ‘you are out of luck, the computer doesn’t allow me to help you.’.

This phrase became a widespread meme, that is still very popular, especially in the tech world, on the workfloor. We can take advantage of this popularity, by creating new memes, where each time a specific harm of technology is the topic. The memes depict something that Humans really want, but unfortunately ‘the computer says No!’.

For example: You may want to protect your privacy, but new, innovative ad-tech is actively trying to outsmart your efforts to get to your personal data. Computer says no to your attempts at protection.

Of course, we’ll make clear that the CHT is your saviour here, and - without distracting from the message - we’ll put in reference to ourselves (e.g. with a small mention of ‘humanetech.com’ in the bottom-right corner).